Collaborative Dynamics and Knowledge Co-Production in serious games

Marina Fontolan and Luciano Levin

May 13, 2022 | Projects
 

Serious games are a type of game used for educational and training purposes, which usually are presented in digital form. This post presents a recently-started postdoc research by analyzing some of its core literature, its goals and research questions.

On the research

The main goal of this ongoing research is to analyze the role of serious games development in the production of scientific knowledge. We will analyze in which areas of knowledge these games are used and what their results are and the role that these games have both in Argentina and in Latin American.

In particular, we want to:

In order to achieve those goals, our research deals both with quantitative and qualitative methods. A search carried out at Scopus on August 12, 2021 with the terms Serious AND Games on the title resulted in a list of 4,227 documents. The use of quantitative methodologies will allow us to better understand the role of Argentina and Latin America in the development and use these types of games and deepen the discussion in the areas of knowledge dealing with serious games.

On Game Studies and Game Development

Game studies is a fairly recent scholar field. There is an important debate on serious games definition and what types of games are considered as such. According to Susi et al (2007), serious games are defined as games in which the recreational aspect is not the main concern of the developer. These type of games also entails the debate of whether they can train or teach something to their players, implying a pedagogical element in addition to artistic elements, software, and narrative. In this research, we agree to Susi et al (2007) and consider that serious games are those games that are used in education, training, simulations or advertising, developed to run on videogame consoles or personal computers. This relationship between video games and their uses in different areas of education and training enables us to discuss the role of these games in the production of scientific knowledge and how they are used in different areas of study.

The Core Literature Review



To be able to understand if and how serious games development interacts with knowledge production, it is crucial to explore Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Serious Game Studies literature. Here, we explore some of the most recent discussions on serious games studies and also the core STS literature we will explore further during the ongoing research.

Fleming et al (2020) is one of the recent serious games studies published. The research focuses on developing a game on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. In this game, each player is given the role of a stakeholder with different experiences, interests, goals, and agendas. Then, the players use the game’s platform to discuss the topic based on these roles, even cooperating with each other to achieve their goals. The result of the survey is that players reported better understanding how to discuss complex issues.

There are also studies on the use of serious games in schools, which focuses on the result of using of this type of game for basic education. Calvo-Morata et al (2020) presents a case study on a game that helped children to identify and prevent practices of bullying and cyberbullying at school. This game proved to be effective in its application in the school environment, as it also brought information on the harmful effects of this practice. This study concludes that serious games have a great ability to communicate and bring information related to the experiences of a school environment.

Serious games can also be used for training and educating undergraduates. The study by Palee et al (2020) discuss the use of games for training medical procedures, using a game that provides information about treatments to cleft lip. This game was tested with medical students and evaluated using several criteria. The result of using the game as a supplementary learning tool on the subject proved to be very successful.

As seen, despite this short literature review, it is noticeable that there is a focus on analyzing the impacts of using serious games in different sectors of education in qualitative studies. For this current postdoctoral research, we intend to do the opposite: to analyze how the development of serious games interacts with knowledge production.

There are several studies that discuss knowledge production as a non-neutral endeavor. Harding’s (1992) discussion is very important for this research. After all, considering the way in which the development of a serious game acts in knowledge production, allow us to question the concept of objectivity, reinforcing its non-neutrality and placing it in different, non-academic spaces. Besides, this discussion is closely related to the arguments presented by Haraway (1988), which focuses on the issue of socially situated knowledge and its challenges. This type of discussion is crucial for the current research: if knowledge is socially situated, how do different types of technology affect knowledge production? One of the possibilities to deal with this situation is to think through the discussions on knowledge co-production, as presented by Jasanoff (2004). The STS role is to rescue this understanding, creating a new language that enables the co-production of knowledge, including political processes and popular participation.

Final Thoughts

As seen, the current postdoc research challenges current serious games research by inverting the usual question of how well did the game worked for teaching people. By using STS discussions on knowledge production, actors, and networks involved, the researchers involved in this project allow us to think how developing these type of games changes our perceptions on knowledge production.


Marina Fontolan. International Visiting Scholar at Robert Morris University and postdoc researcher Centro de Estudos em Ciência, Tecnologia, Cultura e Desarrollo, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro (CITECDE/UNRN). Postdoc grant provided by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). Associate researcher and lecturer at the Department of Science and Technology Policy, Universty of Campinas (DPCT/UNICAMP).

Luciano Levin. Investigador del researcher Centro de Estudos em Ciência, Tecnologia, Cultura e Desarrollo, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro (English: Center of Studies in Science, Technology, Culture and Development – CITECDE, University of Rio Negro – UNRN).  Postdoc supervisor for this research.



Published: 05/13/2022